Assessing the Risk of Conflict over Taiwan

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U slash state or text state to five eleven five eleven. Text state to five eleven five eleven, Txt fees may apply Folks, I'm gonna be honest Crazy about him, I dont I muster some enthusiasm. Th then every now and again a product comes along and I'm like, oh, I actually use I actually actually I actually wear those. Those are they're super comfortable And that's what we got now. Folks, Bombus is in the house. Bombus, baby That's the alliteration I'm looking for Bomas I can't even tell you how excited I am that we got bombas. Bombuses First of all I't about you, but I'm a sock man like I like a nice comfortable sock. If you give me a sock, every other part of my body is immune to discomfort. my feet Uh you thrw in a nice pair of socks, man and you can have yourself a fine day Bombus is the most comfortable sx in the world Man, just get rid of all your old socks. You know what happened to me recently I had some socks in my drawer and I put them on It was as though the fabric had expired likeike when you pulled it on, it made a noise the universe was coming apart they went like, o almost crackling. It was Needless to said, didn' have a good day that Here's even the best part about Bombas. For every item you purchase, an essential clothing item is donated to someone facing housing insecurity, a one for one model. with over two hundred million donations and counting. headad over to bombas d. com slash weekly and use weekly and use code weekly twenty percent off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S com slash weekly Code weekly at checkout Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the We weekly Show podcast. My name is John Stewart. It is a lovely day. It' may nineteenth. Uh, it is Tuesday. I'm actually on Colbert tonight, so if any o Well, this will be airing tomorrow. I'm actually on Cobert Yesterday That's a strange way to that It's my sadly final appearance on the late show and I'm I just can't wait to spend some quality time with my friend hopefully to the pleasure of the audience that we'll be watching. And so I urge all of you, if you are within the sound of my voice, please do watch. and not just that. watch on Wednesday and watch on Thursday. and You know, enjoy celebrate what has been a remarkable run of a person and remove it from the melancholy circumstances by which it occurs because his career in broadcasting and it's not over by any stretch of the imagination, but it deserves to be separated from whatever black hole of perverse corruption A snuffed it out in the first place. And I think that's what I'll be going there. do tonight And that's what I hope that everyone will be doing over these next few days. just truly a once in a lifetime caster performer. And uh can't wait to see him and give him a big old hug. So but on the way to that I would be remiss if I did not also discuss Taiwan ship warar. Thiss maybe that This may be the worst seway I've ever done in the history of this program But it is an important The presresident of the United States has just returned from his historic trip to China where he got what's the Chinese word for bupkus U. We got buas And we don't really know we got into a trade war with no real plan so out of character for this administration. And we're going to see what ends up happening. And who better to help us understand the parameters of what might possibly happen than someone who's written about it for many years, so we're gonna get to that. Our guest today is Professor Chris Mayer And ladies and gentlemen, we are delighted to be joined a gentleman by the name of Chris Miller. He's the author of Chip War Not Doritos, my friend. It's the fight for the world's most critical technology. An American historian. Economic history, international relations. Chris, you're a professor, yes, International history? That's right. Tufts University. That's right. Beautiful. And this is not your first go round. as an author, Putinomics and the struggle to save the Soviet economy and we shall be masters Uob Thank you so much for being here to talk to us You wrote ship Wars in when twenty twenty twenty two? That's right, yeah four years ago And that came out And then like a month later, Chat GBT launched, Yes That's right. And it's been a wild ride in semiconductors since then. I mean, madebe the chips almost became even more seminal and more important to the world economy one hundred percent because as we roll out AI, we need bigger and bigger data centers full of the most advanced semiconductors that we can make today. And so The basic premise of triipboard is kind of it talked about Taiwan and in combination with I guess some Japanese technology and some Dutch technology. came the leading edge, the cutting edge Olive No The most specialized chips that are used in this technology today Yeah, that's right. So the key chips, they're designed still in Silicon Valley by companies like NVIidAia or AMD, But when it comes to AI in particular, they're almost all manufactured by one Taiwanese firm, a company called TSMC, which has the vast majority of its manufacturing capabilities in Taiwan. And so it's this partnership between Silicon Valley and Taiwan that makes the most cutting edge chips possible And what is what is Silicon Valley do they give to Taiwan? Is it the software that they give to them with really the designs of the chips. So if you take a piece of silicon like you'd find inside your smartphone or in a data center, they've got billions and billions of tiny switches called transistors that are etched into the silicon. And different designs produce different capabilities. So an NVIDia chips designed differently from a AMD chip and these designs are what enables progress in the semiconductor industry. And so these design files are essentially emailed over to Taiwan and the Taiwanese do the manufacturing of these designs and put them into the silicon I mean, it's an incredible technology with advances that take place in terms of hours not in terms of sort of epochs So how did you reise the reason that I think it's important to talk today, especially to somebody with your expertise President of the United States has just come back from China. China obviously has designs on Taiwan, an island that is very close to their mainland They always have felt that it is part of, you know, since I don't know when it' split forty nine. wasas it Chhanghai cheheck in forty nine? That's right. Y. Okay So they split off from China. China has always had designs to get it back in the same way, I guess that Russia would have with Crimea. The president of the United States, the United States has always been sort of the implicit and sometimes explicit protector of Taiwan The president of the United States came back and said, maybe I'll use our military support and weapons to Taiwan as a bargaining chip with China I guess saying like, if they would agree to buy more soybeans, we would let them have Taiwan What was your read on the presresident's messaging and and the future of Taiwan as this on the vanguard of twenty first century technology. I would say first off, the US has been getting more and more nervous, not just under Trump, but over the last decade about China's capabilities. So China has wanted to seize Taiwan, as you said since nineteen forty nine, but it's only in the last couple of years where Chinese military capabilities have grown point where they might now be able to succeed in doing so. If there was a war right now, nobody knows how it would play and that's increased concern in Washington about does China have both the intent and the capability to do something around Taiwan. And that's happened just as Taiwan has gotten more and more important as a partner enabling Silicon Valley to produce all of the chips that we need in data centers, in smartphones computers. And so right now, Taiwan is really at the absolute center of the AI industry. and the U.S can't do AI without chips from Taiwan, which means that on the one hand, we've got to treat the Taiwan question very carefully to make sure that we defend Taiwan But on the other hand, we also got to be ready for China looking very carefully at Taiwan, both in terms of achieving its long term strategic aim of seizing Taiwan, but also in terms of realizing the more pressure China puts on Taiwan, the more pressure it puts on us in our AI industry because we're dependent on importing chips from Taiwan too Now is the idea or The chips that are made in Taiwan Are they also is that where where does China make their tips Well, that's a great question. China would like to import the most advanced chips from Taiwan, but the United States doesn't let them. So for the past couple of years, we've said to the Taiwanese, you can't sell the most cutting edge AI chips to China. And China can't produce these chips domestically at any scale that matters. So for cutting edge AI chips, China's in a bind. The most advanced production is in Taiwan. China thinks it owns Taiwan, but it doesn't And the US does not let Taiwan sell to China because we want our companies to have access to the most advanced AI ships not China. What is the relationship politically between the leaders of Taiwan and she of China Is there a world where This isn't a military operation but a transactional u operation where Taiwan cuts a deal with China to do just that. In exchange for not you know, militarily invading them G, the short answer is no. That is the short answer. You know, The Taiwanese have been very clear. They've repeatedly voted for presidents that have said they don't want to be integrated into China, that they want to be an autonomous country, ideally even independent. poll after poll of the Taiwanese population says that they think of themselves as a separate political entity. And I think what's key here is that if you did a poll a generation ago in Taiwan, you would have found a lot of people who' have said they're part Chinese but part Taiwanese. If you do that poll today, what you find is that as the generations change, Taiwanese think of themselves increasingly as a separate. a separate society. And so there's not much interest at all in any sort of integration with China And even economically, forget about, you know, political independence or integrating in that way. they have no interest in saying to the United States We love We love your chips. We love your sweet, sweet silicon transistors by the billions We'd like to cut a deal with these guys economically. We think it'd be beneficial for us. We think it would ease the pressure on us you know,, in terms of them threatening to invade us Is that even a possibility There's some more nuance there. There are some people in Taiwan, especially in the business community who make that argument and say if we have closer economic ties with China, the political situation will be more stable. R. I think the dominant view in Taiwan is to say, look, our population is a tiny fraction of China's There's no hope of an equal economic relationship. And in fact, a lot of people in Taiwan worry that the closer the economic ties, the more China will smother them given its size. And so if you look at where Taiwan's been investing, where Taiwan's been diversifying its trade over the last decade, it's been trying to turn away from China because it's afraid that economic ties are a beachhead for political influence. What are the other? So in Taiwan, you've got this incredible chip industry that is dominant. They are you know, the monopoly in terms of of this kind of manufacturing. What else do they do? Is it a Saudi Arabia oil economy situation and now they've suddenly decided to diversify. what all electronics and circuitry, what do they do there Yeah, there's a whole range of manufacturing from machine tools to plastics, but the electronics industry is by far the dominant player. and it's not just chips. It's the chemicals that go into the chip plants. It's once you take a chip, you put her on a printed circuit board, you wire it together with other devices. You can make almost anything electronic in Taiwan and they're the leader, not just at the chip segment of the supply chain, but at many other segments And it's been a great business for them. It's why they're one of the wealthiest countries in Asia, despite that two generations ago, they were a country doing nothing but farming It's an incredible story Where are they getting the materials for this Well, the materials are easy to dig out of the ground. There're silicon everywhere. The challenge is getting the materials refined to the level of purity that you need. And so when it comes to manufacturing chips, you're manufacturing at essentially the atomic level And so your materials have to be purified basically to the atomic level as well. And so in the chip industry, they talk about eight nines of purity. So ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine is the level of purity you'll need for certain types of chemicals or gases. Why, that's like dial soap. That might be the only other substance. as pure as that How so Sy when they talk about Be there's all these things floating around. so they say that Silicon Valley provides The silicon, which is embedded with the billions of transistors, what do the Japanese do in this supply chain? Today, Silicon Valley doesn't do much silicon at all. They just do the designs first and foremost. Oh they're just doing, they're sending out blueprints. It's They're emailing you. hereere's how you want to here's how you want to draw your little maze because they all they seem to look like little mazes. That's right. That's right. Yeah. That is most of what Silicon Valley does today. There used to be actual silicon in Silicon Valley. That's why they named it Silicon Valley but not And it was a valley. And it was a valley. That's right. Yes. That's right So today it's actually the Japanese that are the world's leader in making the wafers, ultra pure silicon wafers and many of the other chemicals that you need to manufacture chips And then what the Dutch do something. I don't know if it's the icing. what do the Dutch bring? to this process because that's the third leg, yes? That's right. Yeahah. So if you want to pattern where each of the transistors goes on a chip. So put your design file actually into silicon, you need a tool called a photolithography tool. and the Dutch have the world's leading company, really the world's only company that produces the most cutting edge versions of these tools I have to tell you As I hear it described, I can't help feel a sense of pride for humankind that anyone I can remember professor My father worked at RCA. This is in the sixties late sixties And he brought home In nineteen sixty nine, maybe seventy ill later calculator that he brought home was the size of a desk and it added and subtracted and multiplied and divided. and we played with it four hours. But it was it was the size of a desk And I imagine it's the exact same principles as what is now going into these computer, AGI Chat bot models, is it all the same principle It pretty much is. You're carving little circuits into silicon. And the difference is that compared to the nineteen sixties, you're carving a billion times more circuits than was possible then And that is what gives it the ability to make as many calculations as it does at the speed that it does. Yeah, that's right. So if you think of all your files, all of your text messages, all your Instagram likes are all just long strings of ones and zeroos. That's the entire digital world. And each of those has to be reflected by a switch in the silicon turning on and off. And that's why for the most cutting edge chips like those inside of your phone, you need T ten billion or twenty billion of these tiny switches all carved into a chip the size of your fingernail Doesn't this sum up the human experience It is our expertise and scientific advancement that allows for this technology and it is our Mh. I want to say No conceedness That is that we use it for Instagram likes like this. It's almost shocking. Folks You know, I ask you this question a lot of times. Where do you get your news from Me, I'm a town crier guy I like to go outside in the street. seeee if there's a You know, a young person in Kickers with a giant bell tellelling me what's happening. But I know that dude, he's in from my neighborhood. But most of your news, you don't know where it's come from. you don't know the biases involved with these people. That's for ground news. tooe. Do you know ground news It's an app It's a website. And it helps users see beyond whatever single narrative they're getting suubbscriber funded by the way corporate incentives that are influenceding what you're going to see aggregates are reporting from fifty thousand plus news sources worldwide to compison. how these different outlets frame the same story Yeah. And I think as you can see, they frame it differently depending on which murdoch they're working for in Hem talk. We don't need to I don't need to spell this out for you To get unlimited access to the vantage subscription, go to groundneews d. com slash Stewart suubbscribe to get forty percent off. the discounts available only for a limited time. That's ground News d. com slash Stewart, or you can just scan the QR code on screen And donon't forget to get forty percent off ground news Groundneews d. com slash Stewart But I want to get back to so you've got this little supply chain What is China's role all of this, why do we care? if they're not involved in this, or is it what are they providing into this chain that we need them for It's a key question. If you look in terms of dollars, almost all of the money goes to companies outside of China, US, Taiwan, Japan, Netherlands. But the thing the Chinese do provide are some of the basic materials that go in. So rare earth elements, for example, are needed in certain parts of the chip making process. and those are mined and processed largely in China, in some cases almost exclusively in China. And so for the past couple of years, China's been choking off the export of these critical materials, which has causeed problems for the entire semiconductor supply chain Now the when you say rare earth, because you just said silicon is The main ingredient and that's not rare. That's everywhere. It's sand, I guess. It's it's sort of It's everywhere. It just needs to be purified Are they actually rare Yeah are these materials everywhere, but We just haven't Dug for them They are everywhere. What is rare is deposits that have enough concentration to make it economically viable to mine them and to process them. What kind of materials are we talking about? Let's Well, you gott to take out your periodic table and re I have it. Hold on So they get pretty obscuure pretty quickly. Yetrium,rosium, turbium, things you would never think about, but made up words basically Well a lot of these materials were only identified in terms of how do you actually mine and process them in the last half century. So they are pretty new materials in terms of manufacturing, but they've become critical to the entire electronic supply chain you have detailed in your book and I think Brilliantly and it's so interesting how Taiwan became the leader in these kinds of uh, chip assemblages and chip production. And if we could, just briefly Walk us back because it was not It was not a fate accomi that Taiwan was going to be the leader in that. There was a gentleman from Texas Instruments U who had that expertise and took it to Taiwan, yes Yes, that's right. So the chip manufacturing industry started in Silicon Valley and in Texas, with Texas instruments being one of the key players, including in the calculator industry like your father was working on.. And for a long time, it was the US that was the dominant manufacturer of chips. But in nineteen eighty seven, this gentleman, Morris Chang, was passed over for the CEO job at Texas Inruments. one of the greatest mistakes in American history And he went to the Taiwanese government and said, I'd like to start a semiconductor manufacturing company that'd be different than any other company that came before it. Because before that point, companies designed and manufactured ships in house. He did both the design and the manufacturing. He said, I only want to manufacture I want to be sort of like what Gutenberg was for books. Gutenberg didn't write any books. He only printed them. Morurris Chang didn't want to design any chips. He only wanted to manufacture them And that's the origins of Taiwan's dominant position in shipmaking today. So he went over there to do that. Why was it that in the United States with this at their hand, that they weren't able to do both Was it that they just didn't see the future? they didn't see it coming? Yeah, I think that's that's that's the primary explanation. You had these big companies like TI, like Intel at the time, which were doing well They believe their existing business model of both design and manufacturing made sense. and there was this pretty disruptive idea that Morris Chain came up with. At first it wasn't clear it was going to work and it was only over the last decade or two that it became obvious it was the best possible way to manufacture chips because you can not just manufacture for yourself, you manufacture for the entire industry for NvidDia for AMD for Apple, and you have these huge economies of scale that resultve from that How is it? The story of manufacturing has always been sort of create efficient assembly line methodologies How did they not? they miss this in such an advanced industry, if if Ford is the one who figured it out. automobiles so that you could democratize this process and make product that would revolutionize travel available to people at a scale that made the pricing make sense How is that not obvious to everyone in this nascent the computer industry Well you I think in hindsight, it certainly looks obvious, but if you go back to the time, Morris Chang went to his colleagues at TI and said, let's make what he called a foundry, this company that would just manufacture, not do any design. And they asked, well who are your customers going to be And he said, Well, there aren't any customers today because there weren't any companies that only design chips then. You had to have your own in house factory He said, if I build it, they will come And that was a risky bet at the time, but it proved right. And just as he was setting up TSMC in part because he set up TSMC had companies like Qualcom or Nvidia founded at the same time that never manufactured. They just designed and sent those designs to Taiwan See what I find so interesting about that, professor, and I don't know If you think about the creation of the industry at large for computing, it was founded on the idea that like Microsoft We're not going to make the hardware. We're just going to make the operating system And if our operating system is embedded in everything We have a monopoly And if that's how they were viewing software, I'm surprised that they weren't also viewing that for Brain. of whatever it was that they were going to create, that they would they would not only own the operating system, but they would own the physical brain for all of these. Yeah. I think the other dynamic is financial, which is that the closer you are to the customer, the more you can charge And so you you look today, TSMC is a two trillion dollars business NVIidia, which relies on TSMC for almost every single chip manufacturers, NvIidia iss a five trillion dollars B And so if you say, would you rather be TSMC or NVidDia, the answer right now is clearly NVIDia and that's just one of TSMC's manyany customers, and so here's the paradox is that Silicon Valley made the right choice financially The US has by far the most valuable chip firms in the world and ecosystem that everyone is envious of. But it was only possible to get that because we had this reliance on Taiwan. and it was a rational choice to outsource the manufacturing. To Taiwan, the only problem is that as we were doing that, China's military threats and capabilities were growing So who are the companies when you talk about, so in Silicon Valley, you've got chip design. That's Nvidia Uh, who else is on the cutting edge of that? Intel So Intel's a bit of a different case because they still have some in house manufacturing, but set them aside. Okay Nvidia. AMD, Qualcom, Apple, Google, Amazon, all of theseri companies design ships and manufacture almost all of them at TSMC See, this blows my mind because if you think about, you know You're telling a story of specialization In Silicon Valley, it was important for them financially and otherwise. to specialize So they're going to do that. Th then you have a company like Amazon who is saying, okay, yeah, we're gonna specialize in that, but we're also gonna to send you books and energy bars to your house That almost seems antithhetical to the entire premise. Yeah. Yeah. that's been a big change the last five or ten years is that all of the big tech firms used to just buy chips from chip designers Now because they're running these vast data centers, which is a new thing. It's just the last decade that Amazon and Microsoft have become these massive cloud computing companies. They've realized that if you're going to own this many chips, you're better off if some of them are specialized to the specific types of calculations that you're undertaking. And that's why today the big tech firms are among the biggest buyers of specialized chips So now let's take it like back into sort of that geopolitical arena that we're talking about earlier You've got these firms in Silicon Valley who are absolutely crucial to the future of any technology that's going to be utilized anywhere. And they have the greatest designs and the best silicon transistor And they're sending it out to these other places. Did anybody in the government where within those companies think But you know, We're going to need a lot of Uiridium and Pididium and all these other things that we are not in any way mining or refining None of it It sounds crazy, but the answer is not really Everything I like it how it's always. in hindsight, yes, it does sound crazy I think you know, two things happened. One is that companies were late to really realize How problematic the U.S. China relationship was going to get They were constantly hoping, well, the next president is going to make it better or Xi Jinping is going to change his mind and it never happened. It's just been more and more conflict over the last decade. And companies were slow to realize that. But the second thing is that even if you're one of the biggest tech companies on your own, it's hard to solve a mining problem since you are miles away from mining in the supply chain. You're not buying yetrium or dysprosium. Your suppliers aren't buying it. It's the suppliers of your suppliers of your suppliers, which are often in different countries or different continents. And so these big tech companies often struggle themselves to understand how much Yitrium is in their end product Oh, they don't even understand down range what is required to make their product They've been spending the last couple of years trying to get up to speed and it's a hard set of questions. You know what they should do is plug it into chat GPT and it'll just come out with a whole list of dysprosium where you can buy it. When did the first because it's I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around it because it's so Bananas to me. it's sort, it reminds me of, you know, we have cars, but you know what we're going to need for those cars, tires and vulcanizeed rubber. Ohh yeah, but we don't have rubber, o, well we better figure that out. Imagine people going, no, hey, man, I just designed the cars I don't know what you know, I didn't realize we needed rubber No, it does sound like a total failure of supply chain management. And I think that that's fair. I think in the defense of the tech companies, here's what's different from cars. So when when Henry Ford was around The number of suppliers he had was small and all of them were in Michigan oday, if you're putting together a smartphone You've got thousands and thousands of suppliers, both the ones you're buying from directly and their suppliers. And they're on every continent in the world And the number of materials that goes into a smartphone is in the dozens But what I would say is I'll almost give a pass to the tech company because I know, you know, their focused on one thing who I won't give a pass to is the United States government How you have an industry that is so crucial to, I mean, right now All the discussion is we're not allowed to put any guardrails on AI. We're not allowed to regulate it in any sense because if we slow them down just a moment They will be passed by China and America will no longer be a superpower If that is the stakes that we're dealing with inability to plan this out in some measure, almost feels unforgivable it's certainly led us to a pretty tough situation. And I think here's the Here's the real dilemma is that governments know less than companies If you ask the government, explain the supply chain for an AI server, w, their first step is to call the companies that design the AI servers. Because how would the government know Who are the component suppliers for this or that piece? And so you'd like to think the government should be in charge, but then you realize the government knows less than companies do And they're not putting together a strategic planning board that reaches out to Silicon Valley and says How can we make your industry more resilient And how can we safeguard your supply chains? When was the first supply chain disruption in this industry. Was it twenty ten? Yeah, twenty ten and twenty eleven, China first started cutting off rare earths to Japan which had implications for the entire tech sector. then China rolled it back and most of the industry basically forgot about it and hoped that would never come again. And that should have been our wake up call, but it wasn't. But it was a wake up call for Japan. That's right That's right. And what was so so how did Japan deal with When it first hit in twenty ten, remember, this is sixteen years ago, what did they do at that point So they started investing in rare earth mines and processing facilities outside of China. So a big one in Australia, processing in Malaysia. They didn't solve their problem, but they took some meaningful steps to mitigate their risk. And in the United States, we did essentially nothing I'm sorry. It' It's not funny. It's tragic. 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They say, you know for you to do any of the refining or even the mining, you know, it could be twenty years before something comes online and is really significant So here's what's crazy about that What was the year again that they disrupted the supply chain? twenty ten. And what year is it now? We're almost there. We should by now have minds ready. Yep, That's right. That's right. If we had in that moment said, oh, this isn't now And I don't know this and maybe this is something that you don't know either. But let's just say geologically Surely there are places in the United States where these elements exist in a concentrated enough form that we would be able to mine them effectively. I don't I think refining them is a much different process and from what I understand, it's it's not particularly pleasant That's right. But your intuition is correct. There are places in the US as well as in South America and in Africa and elsewhere that you can find the materials you need. And the processing is not easy. It's sometimes not that clean. It's not cheap, but it's also not rocket science. how much have the Chinese monopolize this industry and is any of their forays into Africa also involved in the rare earth industry is any of their belt and road investments. In other words I guess what I'm getting at is they very clearly have an industrial policy How much is their industrial policy We're still ahead in making the specs. But how much have we built this industry on the tenuous edge of a rock that's teetering and that how much of the foundation of these industries, do they now control? So for certain of the rare Earths, especially what's called the heavy rare eararths, their processing share is almost one hundred percent. almost all processing Tay is in China Of rare earth. Of certain types of rare earths. Everyone has a different type of processing, but certain ones, it's basically all in China Now that's not true for the mining in some cases, and everyone is different, but there's a literal monopoly for certain types of materials So why in God's name would we start a trade war with them I think the administration very clearly wasn't expecting, but should have expected China to retaliate using exactly this tool. the one tool that our most important industry is based on what did you make of? Did you follow U I thought it was really unusual that when they went to the summit brought basasically our entire tech industry with them. I mean, u ome Apple Oh Nvidia Uh Tesla SpaceX U Boeing And then obviously the financial guys from Goldman Sachs and Blackstone and all that God What did you make of the presence of those compompanies and individuals, was it I can't wrap my mind around, was it a show of strength Or was it in some ways a show of deference You know, I think the dilemma we face as a country is that China is both our number one economic competitor, but also a huge market for our most important companies And for companies, they are laser focused on keeping access to the China market, so important to their sales and financial performance, which means they're constantly pushing the U.S government to make sure that China policy is made with a focus on company sales in China in mind. And so most of the CEO's that were visiting, they wanted to make sure they could keep selling into China. A that the US would let them keep selling, and B that China would keep taking their products because they need the market It strikes me as such a fundamentally backwards way then of demonstrating strength and leverage. is bring with you the most powerful B leaders in our country basasically Genulex opposed to demonstrate resolve. And China knows that it's got a really powerful tool in terms of its ability to cut off access to our companies whenever it wants to. And it's done that on a regular basis So what What was the greatest strength then for America, it's clearly now not our materials. our manufacturing process What is it? Is it our allies Even when you look at materials, I think it's a nuanced picture. So China produces a lot of the basic materials. But if you look at the high end materials that those basic materials are based on, a lot of that R and D still happens in the United States or in friendly countries like Japan So we're great at taking the stuff that China produces doing R and D on top of it and selling it for a lot more money to the rest of the world. Like if you look at rare eararths, does China make any money off rare earths? No Almost done. Wait, really? It's a tiny business, tiny industry. Where earth is an industry that crucial to the technological progress of humankind is a bad business It's a bad business. And the reason that China dominates it is because Chinese firms produce and then sell with little to no profit And so they undercut any other company that wanted to enter the market because you can't make any money because China is producing at very low prices So what their're understanding is This isn't a money maker. This is a strategic sledgehammer And it's worth it to us You know, they used to call this in the business a loss leader Yeah, you know, they they it's like when you go by the I can't remember what it was Hickory farms and they'd have the little plate with the little cheese cubes and you'd go and go, You're making money on this. You're just giv it away and they're like, right But we got you in the store, didn't we Is that their methodology for this that's one hundred percent right. and it's worked It's worked. It's got us in the store. It's made us dependent on their materials. And right now we're in a position where even our most expensive products, our most advanced ships We can't sell them unless we can get these materials from China Well now let's Let's complicate it a little more. Let's let's get away from because right now we're just talking about sort of the advantage that China might have for the very beginning of our supply chain They've got the mines, they refine the materials, and then they send them out for all our brilliant engineers and technologists to make. The Dutch come in, they buff it up a little bit. The Japanese do their thing. What we've learned about manufacturing in China is they invited Apple in pay workers much less, let them take advantage of the for your regulations and all that And all they had to do was bring their expertise. But what did the Chinese have them do train All of their people on their expertise And so now they have industries that are competing with that are they doing the same with these chips For a long time, the answer was yes, and they were making progress in catching up. But then in twenty nineteen, the US and the Dutch and the Japanese began restricting sale of certain of these advanced chip making tools to China And so right now, the ASML, the Dutch tools we were talking about, you can't sell them to China at the most advanced levels. and it's really cut off a lot of the progress that China had been making And it's meant that for the most advanced ships, almost all of them, including all the R and D is happening outside of China in Taiwan, in Japan and the U.S. and in Europe. and it's only because of these controls that that's the case But let me ask you, knowledge Travels. I mean, it's one of the things that we're seeing now if you take it outside of a trade war and put it into a real war, it's one of the reasons why U thingsings are so fraught in Iran Uh We obviously have nuclear knowledge and technology that far exceeds theirs But they're getting enough of it that they can compete and that they can make they've got the centrifuges now. they've got the other stuff What is preventing China from developing the kind of expertise and knowledge of bringing in leaders in that industry to educate. I mean, I can't imagine that they're not Planning for that They're certainly trying, but I'd say different types of knowledge travels at different speeds. nuclear weapons, you mentioned, nuclear weapons were invented now in the nineteen forties U They're so straightforward, even the North Koreans can make them And so the level of complexity in nuclear weapons is a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the level of complexity in one of these Dutch tools that's used for making chips. You've got the most complex engineering ever done, hundreds of thousands of components, manufacturing happening at the nanometer scale. That's virus sized, and it's got to happen accurally every single time. And so yeah, China' trying to copy it. you know Dutch media have repeatedly reported of different ways that Chinese hackers have broken into the Dutch company to try to steal the blueprints. That's all happening, but it's really hard stuff And it's now been almost a decade that China has been trying to copy this machine and they haven't made a lot of progress How much of a moving target is this expertise in other words If they were ten years behind and they're slowly catching up How much more advanced you know Are we still disappearing past the horizon? or is it a little bit more of a fixed target and they're going to be able to find their way to it. Yeah, that's a key point. and because technology moves forward so rapidly, it's a very, very fast moving And the reason why you've got companies like NvidDia or like TSMC that have this dominant market position is precisely because their R and D is so capable. Every year they're delivering a much, much better manufacturing process or a much, much better design. And so if you're sitting in China, you're not trying to catch up to twenty twenty six level. If you hit twenty twenty six, but it's already twenty thirty, you're light years behind And you've got to catch up to this moving train. It's been very difficult to do Will it be In your estimation, is it easier for us to catch up on the raw materials end or for them to catch up on the high tech refinement end I would rather have our problem than their problem. Okay Well that okay, listen I don't know how far into the podcast we are. We could be an hour, we could be two hours. I don't really know I just heard a glimmer of hope I just heard a little Flash of sunshine just came out there. you'd rather have our problem How would you attack our problem So here's why, here's why. F the the mining of the materials that can happen in a bunch of different countries. N easy, but we know the materials are out there Is it happening in a bunch of other countries? It's starting to happen It's starting to happen. So some of these mes are starting to come online That's right That's right. Yep.s that's the first. The second is that the processing It gets better over time, but the rate of improvement is nowhere near the rate of improvement in chips, which means that we can figure this stuff out. and a lot of the key processing steps were invented in the US or in Japan or in Europe. So again, this is it's not simple, but it's not rocket science You talked about the refinement of the raw materials, the rare earth metals that they're pulling out Exactly. We actually invented that process for certainpes of them, yes, invented in the United States. And then decided but. we don't want to do it, that would be too easy We're we're not going to we're not going to bother with that Yeah, that most of the key rare earth magnets, for example, these chemistries were invented in the United States, often in US military labs before we got out of the business. And so can we learn that again? I think the answer is pretty clearly yes. Now My understanding of the trade war is to some extent, being levied force corporations to repatriate Some of the manufacturing base that we lost when China joined the WTO and globalization sort of hllowed out. base wouldould that be accurate Yeah, I think that's right and that's how the president sees the dynamics. But I think I would say a lot has changed in the last thirty years. The way you make a car then versus now is totally different. You know thenen we didn't have cars that could drive themselves. today, We're on the cusp of autonomous driving in a big way. And so we shouldn't be trying to rewind the clock to nineteen ninety. But we should be asking ourselves, how do we manufacture the things that we'll want to be producing at scale in twenty thirty five? And those are two very different questions Now is that what when they had passed the ChipsS Act, was that intended to address the issue that you're talking about partly But I think also the ChIS Act was laser focused on the Taiwan dependency that we started our conversation with, which is that if your entire tech sector relies on one provider and China keeps threatening to blockade or invade them, that's a huge strategic challenge too Professor This is where the rubber meets the road. I hate to come back to rubber again, Vulcanized rubber, by the way, the processing of the rare materials of rubber You have the opportunity to be Silicon Valley for our manufacturing U our manufacturing process or base in America in the sense that I want you to think about the specs. If you're designing a process between government and these companies and a strategy to make America more resilient and yet still remain at the forefront of these technologies What would you do? How would you design that Here's what I'd say. Our problem is not innovation Our problem is dependence on China for critical components. And so that's it. It's as simple as that. simimple as that. Our companies are the most innovative in the world. We've got no problems on that front. is that we're too dependent on Chinese inputs for all of the innovative products that we make. And so I think that's a problem that's solvable. Part one is to say, we've got these allies in Japan, in Canada, in Europe and Australia. They've got great geology, they've got great manufacturing capabilities. Let's work with them, not against them. That's part one. Okay, professor I've got some bad news for you. It's been a complicated couple of years. When we launched the trade war, you may not have noticed We didn't do it just to to China. So Again And I I hate to come back to the part where my brain hurts But the first piece of strategy, and we'll get back to the rest of the strategy, but the first piece of strategy you laid out is Our strength is in the alliances we have with these other countries like Canada, and We're absolutely obliterating those relationships I would not have put that at the start of my strategy. tootally agree. So that's so, so Let's say that those relationships are good. Yeah What are how are you leveraging those relationships to make us stronger All of these countries have a similar version of the dilemma. They're becoming more dependent on China too. every single year. China' competing with their industries. They need Chinese rare earth and other inputs. And so we ought to work with them to lock out the Chinese from our market and say, we can't have more Chinese rare earths, but we can source from among these friendly countries, whoever's got the best geology for this mineral, that mineral, whoever's got the best component for this manufactured good or that manufactured good, that ought to be the strategy is band together with your friends Would you invest? How would you sweeten that pot for places that have, you know, for instance in China because they're much more focused on central planning, They look at the future and say, well, the real problem here for us is going to be electrification So we might have the rare materials and we might have that. But if we move towards where everything is moving towards AI and cloud computing We're also going to need in the way that you know, they're trying to build data centers here. They're going to need giant data centers and they're going to need a ton of water And they can just go out. to the rural areas of China and go We're doing it here the populace can't go Not in my backyard, you know How are we going to How are we going to do that? How do How do we incentivize these other countries keeping an eye on the electric, you know with our with our eye down the road You know, I think there's A lot of different tactical ways you could target this industry or that industry, but we have one superpower that we haven't used enough, and that's the size of our market. If you add up the U. S economy plus the European economy, plus the Japanese economy. you'reready at two and a half times larger than China And companies collectively we're much larger than China. The problem is we've been dividing ourselves into different parts rather than aggregating it all together. And if you're a company that has to choose, do you want access to that market? or the Chinese marketset that's a small fraction, the choice is obvious would how would China react to would they see that as Host O would they seek come up with something that's a little bit more would they seek a compromise in that scenario I think they would see it as hostile, but they also need access to our market because theirir entire manufacturing base is geared towards exporting to us the United States to Europe to Japan. We're buying all the products that they're producing. And if we threaten to close that off and cause immense problems for their entire industrial base I it's a lot more likely that they're going to come to the table do on your computer. But chances are You don't want me to know what you too on your computer not that I'm in any way suggesting your searches are untowards. 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That's all I'm saying Go to sururfshark dot com slash John Stewart and use co John Stewart to check out to get four extra months of Surfshark VPN at sururfshark d. com slash Joon Stewart Co Johon Stewart to get four extra months. . Do you think and this gets back to something else, but Do you think one of the unintended consequences of this trade war? is not only have they in the way that Iran now recognizes the power they have over the Strait of Hormuz China recognizes now the power they have in terms of rare earths almost equally as importantly They recognize that they can diversify their export base 'causeuse when we li And I'm Forgive me if this is the wrong information, but My understanding is Their exports went up after we levied those tariffs to the United States, they just push them to They just developed more resilient supply lines elsewhere. Yeah and the exports went to Europe, they went to India, they went elsewhere, and those are exactly the countries we should be trying to get on our team, working with us to build one collective market that China has to negotiate access into They just BYD just got into Canada That's right. And I think that's, you know, I think that's an error on the part of Prime Minister Carney up in Canada, but I think that shows that if you're going to bully your friends, they're going to diversify their partnerships. Why would you say it's an era error because you think it's going to crush Canadian car markets or just their car markets in general I think both also, it's going to be a major issue in the relationship with the United States although I imagine At this point for them, they probably feel like, well what else are we supposed to? I mean, they're so reliant on the United States It feels like this trade war has forced everybody to look elsewhere Yes, I agree with that. And I think know we should be doing the opposite, forcing them to look towards us, aligning their policies with us and tackling the Chinese challenge collective. Now this is probably going to be outside your area of expertise, but I'm going to ask you to weigh in on it like you're an expert anyway and I want you to talk with certainty and just say that you know you can't be wrong Because you're a professor. All right. Do you know you have the diplomas This is now this is the metaphorical nuclear weapon in the conversation So our actions alienating our allies while not making inroads to our rivals in terms of the resilience of our supply chains has forced people to look elsewhere in the world, but are one fininal card to play has always been We are the reserve currency whether it's petro dollars or dollars or that that is our Final weapon. we deploy is all of this weakening that Last bullet we have in our gun as well You know, I think it's the right question to ask, but I think the answer is not yet Okay. first, if you look at the value of the dollar versus other currencies, you haven't seen a major move You'd expect the dollar to fall in value if everyone was selling their dollars not happening. Hasn't it fell though in the past two years? bit right. But currencies move up and down and nothing Okay nothing that suggests a dramatic change. Okay. Nothing that you would think is like, oh, this is a permanent change How much of it though, besides the value of it, is the strategic play that in the way that, you know, Canada may not look at bringing BYD in as a great strategic move, but they feel like it's their only move Do you think other countries might look at it? Like if this is the way the United States is going to behave, We have to do this The second question is, if you're not going to buy dollars, what are you going to buy? You know, there's only so many Argentinian pesos in the world, Swiss Franc, small country Well, the Chinese Uh, cururrency, perhaps Well, And so this is the key question because one of the reasons that Chinese manufacturing is so competitive is that they control their currency by not allowing the free exchange of Remmond B into other currencies And if they were to ever open that up, it would create potentially significant economic problems them So rather than internationalizing the RMB, they've been actually trying to lock down the flows in and out of China because they want control over them And they I mean are generally accused also of manipulating the value of And the reason why I didn't name the Chinese currency is because I can't pronounce R Remim Remnimi. I always I always add another M Remnimbi How does this in your mind result, you know We have so many open ended conflicts that feel like we stepped into with a lack of kind of strategic vision where we're We're fighting these different areas on different fronts How does this unwind or are we all just white knuckling it to kind of see where what what incentive does China have right now to do anything other than exploit their advantage Wh I think China is going to exploit their advantage. But I also think that if you're sitting in Xi Jinping's chair Not everything looks perfect either. You're worried about the energy shock from Hormuz. You're probably worried about your economy slowing, youth unemployment rising, you're clearly worried about your military. You've just purged all your top generals and who knows what other conspiracies are at works inside of the Communist Party, You're paranoid. guy And so yeah on this particular issue you look pretty strong But I think a lot of other metrics, China doesn't look nearly as strong as it would like to look, and X is clearly nervous about his domestic control, his his economic position And so he's not as strong as I think his position in rare Eth might suggest. You also obviously have a great expertise in Russia I want to ask you when you think about Putin and and she, you know We were under the mindset that if we were to ennggage Russia in Paristroica Dayetant and their economy that they would be leading a more peaceful cooperative and that they would join Uh, you know, the nations of the world and we would all live in a rules based environment and Uh he took that and invaded Crimea and then attacked Cane clearly didn't understand kinds of historical grievances. that were occurring there and his vision of recreating whatever empire it is that he thinks is is there Birth right How much of that can be also applied to she and China It seems to me like a lot Okay, okay If you look at China's foreign policy, we think of just the US. China relationship, but look at the China Japan relationship. China' caused one of its largest trading partners to turn increasingly anti China because of the rare earth dispute in twenty eleven and a series of territorial issues. Look at the Korea China relationship. Koreans have really turned against China over the last couple of years because China has been imposing economic sanctions on Korea. Look at the Philippines China relationship. They're constantly clashing in the South China Sea with the Chinese Coast Guard and the Philippine Coast Guard ramming each other Look at India, China launched a small war against India and the Himalayas in twenty twenty over some disputed territory. You look around China and you find there's a whole lot of countries that have a bad and deteriorating relationship with Beijing and that's because China's trying to rewrite all those relationships in China's favor Does that give us a strategic opening And look, I know this is all complicated me clelearly, you know, there was a a summit between she, Modi, and Putin and everybody was holding hands. So you know You can't tell how much of it is two of them or three of them enjoying watching the United States squander whatever international goodwill it had If you were If you were playing the odds on all this It sounds like That's a huge strategic opening for the United States. I think that's right. And you've seen all of these countries take steps to build their military capabilities, to defend against China, to increasingly work together, even if they not working with us, it's the Philippines and Japan, or Japan and India working together to try to constrain China's rising capabilities. And so even if we're not cooperating with them in the ways we probably should be, they're cooperating with each other to try to mitigate the impacts of China's foreign polic If we were to rebuild those types of Western alliances that we were more accustomed to having And and then including South Korea and the Philippines And. Do you think that would be a successful bllw? against whatever China's ambitions are and against whatever ' ambitions are, although he seems somewhat frozen in whatever quagmire he's gotten himself into I go back to where we were a couple of minutes ago in our conversation. You add up the US plus China, I'm sorry, plus Japan, plus Europe, plus India, you've got a huge share of global GDP, a huge share of the economy, a huge amount of military power. China doesn't want all these countries working together And so that's there How concerned are you about the Putin and XI summit? Look, these guys have been working together closely for years. They've celebrated birthdays together. They describe each other. Are they really? Yes, Yes, Putin's birthday They because according to Donald Trump, it's really a special relationship that he has with you. What are is Trump is he trying to make us them Is he trying to create? you know, I read something today that He had said that Russia, China, the United States should get together and end the international crriminal Ct at the Hague you know, I think there are folks in the administration who have an idea that's not crazy to say You don't want China and Russia together, so you're better off splitting them apart. in theory, that logic makes sense. But the reality is that if you move closer to Russia today, Russia is still going to find China to be its most reliable partner. And so the likelihood that we split them apart in the short run seems to me to be pretty implausible. And so why what I don't understand about that is He seems to be The era of trade and goodwill that we created, this world order over the past eighty years was at our behest The idea that any of this occurs without our u patrolling of the seas And without our trade rules and without our dollar, sort of being the foundation of it all And now we're saying, no, that was exploitative of us. And so we have to become like Russia and China great power that takes things because we're great powers Is that our plan now clearly, Trump is going to be much more transactional in relations with Allies. Now I think you know to his u, you know, to his defense, it's true Were the Germans free riding on defense? Absolutely. Was it necessary for the Japanese to spend more on defense? one hundred percent. But wasn't that again That was kind of our design. We're the ones who said you're not allowed to have those things anymore Well, I I think that was the design at first. And then over the last couple of decades, a series of presidents, Democrat and Republican have urged the Europeans to do more on defense. and they haven't done much. So I think I understand the source of Trump's frustration, but I also think that know the medicine has been just as painful as the as what we're trying to cure Do we now is Europe still our greatest ally or are they now kind of just another rival power and maybe they are maybe the the single largest liberal democracy bloc going because Trump seems much more comfortable wanting a situation more like what Putin has in Russia or what she has in China You know, I think five years ago, the answer to the question was obvious. Today, I think both in Washington and also in Europe, there are people that really question whether the word ally makes sense. When I zoom out though, you know, this headline or that headline, it's easy to fix it on, you zoom out and say, what are the interests? What are the interests of these blocks? And it seems to me there's still a lot aligned. Neither the US nor Europe want a stronger Russia that's expanding militarily neither wants a China that is threatening their industrial base. And on those two core issues, I still think that there's a lot of alignment despite all of the complicated and controversial headlines that we see So in your mind, this isn't a game of risk. where the United States of America rather than being the head of the Allied powers is saying, lookook, There's three axis powers. There's us, there's Russia, there's China And we're going to divide up our spheres of influence And if that hurts U if that hurts I don't know the European Union or Great Britain So be it I think I think the debate is really about What's the definition, what's in our interest? There's the short term transaction. I want what I want tomorrow. and there's the long term, let's build a relationship that will last over decades, involve mutual trust, involve mutual development. and that's what we had built in Europe Okay. NATO was in our interest and in Europe's interest, and we built it over time. Not every single step of the way was in everyone's interest equally, but the net benefit was good for everyone Do you still believe in in NATO being a viable institution for kind of holding that alliance together and keeping Russia at bay You know, I think that it's been a complicated eighteen months for sure. But the key question is, do the Russians think NATO iss a viable institution And I would say they certainly haven't tested it yet Oh, that's interesting. So your in your mind, they would like it not to be But they still feel that it's got enough teeth that they don't want to push What they really do I know this is off topic in terms of the chips and stuff, but I'm curious. and this is your obviously an area of expertise that you've written on. Putin move beyond you, you know, if he had the opportunity Dova and Poland and I mean, would he reconstitute I think if the opportunity presents itself, he's going to try to maximize his power and influence over the region. Now that doesn't mean he's going to be reckless and dive into a war with NATO, But if the door is open, he's going to walk through it. Do you think he's as vulnerable as people are talking about He certainly thinks he's vulnerable. He's certainly paranoid He certainly in the last couple of months, there's been a reggular disconnections of the mobile internet in Moscow. You can't order an Uber, you can't use DoorDash, you can't check your email because the internet's been shut down for smartphones. That's a sign of just how worried he is So as China and the United States battle for the supremacy over twenty first century AI and AGI technology Russia is deciding to make it so you can't have an Uber that I've that It sounds like they're floundering and they're they're falling much further behind And the Ukrainians have now fought them to a standstill Ukraine iss a third of the population of Russia. Most people would have said much, much weaker than Russia when the war started. but now it looks like On the question of who can win territory, the Ukrainians are just as strong as the Russians And in your mind and this is sort of like as a wrap up to put the whole thing. And I so appreciate your time, but also your expertise in all of these areas that It's very hard to get what I like to think you're providing, which is a nuanced picture of all these competing God dynamics. that are occurring It feels very clear that if cooler heads prevail And we get through these sort of turbulent waters. It's in everybody's best interest. Look, even when we talk China and Taiwan, the idea that, you know, we always say like, oh, China will just take them militarily because they can But as we see with countries like Iran and Ukraine It ain't so easy. And Taiwan has certainly got the technology produce drones and weapons and all kinds of other stuff. And if as you said The temperature on the island is much more nationalistic than even what it was twenty years ago Why would China risk ting it's economic progress and technological progress at such harm even make that move. I think you're right that if you were solely focused on economic and technological progress, you stay away I think where I worry is that it's not clear that's where Xi Jinping and Chinese leadership are primarily focused. Their economy has been slowing the last couple of years and they've let it happen because they're thinking both about economics but also about power politics. And that's why I think it's so important that the US and its allies present a United front against China and say, if you move on Taiwan, the cost will be catastrophic And you believe they might they they might understand that. Or is it as it was in the case with Putin and Ukraine, No, This is ours from a thousand years ago and that's we're going to make ourselves whole whatever the cost may be I think if Putin had known what the cost would be, he would made a different decision in february twenty twenty two. Oh wow, thats that's really interesting Is he someone that is reflective enough in a way that maybe our president is not. to to understand that understand that mistake. Well, I would say, you know, and he's now four years into the war. It doesn't look like it No Thank you so much for joining This been absolutely fascinating. Thanks for all the insights. Chris Meller, author of Chip War The fight for the world's most critical technology and obviously a historian, economic history, international relations professor at Tufts University. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you. This is an intervention. 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Uwor is efficient So visit uppwork d. com slash twoWs right now. post your job for free com slash TWS to connect with top talent, ready to help your business grow that UPworK dot com slash TWS. do it now unless you're scared Let me tell you something about professors You know never bring a sledgehammer to a nuance fight. These professors, they don't want nothing to do with broad statements. Every time I jump in, they were like, And then you got, you know, how does the United States not force it to be fair. To be fair to the United States. You know what? To be fair to China, to be fair to Trump. He was fair to a lot of people. Right Imagine knowing so much. that you have to be fair to everybody I can't imine no. Talk shit. I don't want tona live in that world. Whatever happened to knowing just a little bit? And being fair to no one. Thank you. I think that's still in vogue, honestly. Not knowing very much is still happening. And I am on the leading cutting edge of not knowing enough to be fair to anybody Somebody's gott to do it. It's hard work, but somebody's gott to do it. Why we love you? Who's back? quick, quick, quick question. Who's backking down first And I still can't figure out The end game on any of this shit, Russia, China. none of it. likeike how is it in twenty ten? That was the thing that blew my mind the most was, you know, they talk about, well, you can't really start mining your own rare earths, you can't really do any of that stuff because the lead time is so long twenty ten pull the plug on rare Eth in Japan And now it's sixteen years later, if we had done something then, we would not be in the position we're in today And worse, we have a Chips act that our current president thinks is horrible, horrible. He doesn't even want to we have a plan now. We have something and he hates it Wow, because it's it was signed by Autopen Yes, it exactly. It's invalid in fact. Yeah, that's right I think some of the details that have come out about the trip make me not so sure that there is a plan, like the idea that she gave Trump these like rose seeds and there was no real reaction to it Wait, what did he give him? It feels like a burn. No. He gave him rose seeds It just felt like, oh, did you just destroy your rose garden? Here's like some seeds. Oh is that what he did? He was being shady. I don't know. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but after King Charles gave him a bell I was like, something's going on here. I think people are just making fun of him. So fucking funny. I did see that the People's Republic bands played YMCA Which I was like, he's so easy, you guys. like Did he Dan? I feel like we should be able to manipulate this man more easily for our own purposes. I actually was reading some of that like what some countries have done to make him feel at home. and I think it was Korea where they just served him steak with ketchup a burger b. I'm telling you man, our problem is We're so disturbed by the cat that we can't do the things that would not like the Republican Party has no probleblem kind of buffering his ego to the point where they can get some of the things that they want. like All China had to do was throw a couple of four year olds out in front of him to sing a song. He's like, this is our greatest rival on you know, And then the minute he shows up, they're like, these children They're singing to me Whatever you need. They love me. I think you're right though that they're they're fucking with them. likeike I do think they're I think the lack of respect that they all like I think they are all privately enjoying this. They are enjoying seeing the United States country that Be honest. holds itself up in a slightly arrogant fashion as a shining city on a hill. I think there They're loving seeing a little bit of schmutz on our shirt. Or even did you see the Marco Rubio story that there were sanctions? Like China had sanctions against Marco Rubio from the time he was a senator? And then in order for him to attend this trip, they did some finagling with the transliteration of his name. to overcome the sanctions so he could go on the. There are sanctions against Marco Rubio to travel. too enter China from his time as a senator. So they did some tinkering with his name. It's all hanging by Nonsense. It is hanging by nonsense. Do you guys hear whistling? That's definitely the construction on my street. I'm sorry. Wait, so the construction workers just sit outside your window whistling at you? I don't know. I feel like it's like a leaf flower or My sounds have been Incredible. Lord knows, I have been around many construction sites in my life. even worked on a couple We never had a whistle machine I'm being cat called by f story' up. Yeah. All right, Brittneany, what are they got for us this week? Let's do it.? John If you were to vote for one Nixon or Trump Nixon If only to get the EPA. Yeah I mean, Nixon at this point would be considered a gay communist in today's Republican partarty Yeah water c like waterater Yeah, like Wait a minute. you hired a couple of guys to break into a thing. That's adorable. I mean Nixon and by the way, Spiro Agneue, Spiro Ague went down because of a slush fund And it was just a little hint of a slush fund that Nixon was using to fund other things. And I think Agneew got into like tax trouble because of it. I'm sure I'm mixing the realities of those things. But think about that in comparison to one point eight billion dollars of taxpayer money At least I think Nixon's slush fund was donors. All bribes. yeah. It was At least it was straight up bribes.ast it was bribes. This is fucking our money I mean, it's Do we even have a Congress? No. Or a court? Did you see that the actual amount too is one point seven seven six Well, it's because they're too cute. It's all Orwell. It's all a fuck you troll. Everything they're doing is a fuck you troll to us. This is against the weaponization of it. and it's patriotic. They're trolling us. His entire career is a troll. What do you think's gonna to happen Nothing with that fund. They're going to give it to people that sprid mace at police officers and pretend that they're rewarding patriotism. Yeah. The list of people sentence chill up my spine. Yeah By the way, it's not transparent. They don't have to tell you where they're doing it, how they're deciding it, who's getting the money. None of it. It just feels like one of the more egregious things that's happened recently. And so I guess the faith in this system still exists somewhere in my body because I'm like, this can't stand. Surely there will be a A hearing, at least. I don't know about that. No. You've seen those hearings, right? You know, it'll devolve into grandstanding that gets it nothing or they'll just bring Pam Bondi to come back with her book of Slams to be like, you know, you've got a lot of nerve. You're from Delaware. the small you know, she'll Dude, we're We're in the upside down everythingverything that you thoughtw that there would be at some point. it really, you know what it reminds me of You ever see those videos where like a horde of teens flies into like a CVS It just starts taking shit Sash and grab. Smashing and everybody's just standing around like Is anybody going to call somebody or are we just going to like that's what we are The Trump administration is a smash and grab on the American public. on the taxpayer It is the most corrupt on just utterly Unsathed, unleashed on us and they are just grabbing whatever they can and pretending that it's remuneration for some victimhood that they faced that's all fictitious. It's nonsense, wild Smasashhing grab. Yeah. It fills me with white hot rage esn't it? It really does. It's like this this this week, this news Like I Like Lauren said, it's like sort of reminds you that you still have like a barometer because you're just like Oh my god I also so yeah, like the pace of news you wind up pairing it with other stories. So today there's also the story about how many people have dropped out of the ACA because they can't afford it. and then millions their premiums. Millions. And you're just watching like that we're going to hand out a billion dollars for fun You know how hard we fought? to get nine and eleven first responders some health care for the thing and they always told and that was not much more.. And these guys just drop it down. And the thing that is stunning to me is like I don't think we even know who to turn to where you see this level of corruption and this lack of transparency. and you really are looking around like I don't even know who to call. There's no nine hundred and eleven for this. No one's coming to the rescue. This is all about electoral politics. These guys got to go electorally because it's totally legal and the people that The people that are supposed to be guarding us against these interests have no have no responsibility. Congress Theoretically, when people created these laws, they thought that Congress wouldn't allow a president to take advantage of it in this way. And instead they bow at the altar of them. It's ridiculous. That's right. And you won't be able to go to the Supreme Court because they will find a way to twist If if it's based on precedent that doesn't fit, they'll make it fit. If there's a precedent that says you can't do it, they'll overturn it. They will just enable his corruption in the baldest way. He is a meme coin of a president He is a pump and dump scheme of a president So long as all the right people keep getting rich off it, they'll be fine with it.? That's right. Yeah. guysuys, in an attempt to reach for some optimism. Yeah Today is a big primary day and midterms they're coming up people knew Oh no No That was one of those. I'm gonna reach for some optimism and then you just you take the blinds and you just go. I opened the jar. It was just some dust puffing out. I feel you. What's the last one, Br? All right, last question. Yeah U John question do you always get that annoys you I mean, none of them, it's always nice to be asked questions. Oh. It's o like yeah Yeah how do you get annoyed by questions I don't, you know, I'm not asked that many I'm trying to think Okay, okay, I've got one. I've got one Will you make my bagel I know who asks that one. Yeah, I get that at home. Does he live in your house? He does, sometimes That's the only one I get where I'm like They're already made. Rollles are reversed. Yeah,'s that's exactly it. I can think of a couple for you. Yeah, me too. Oh, you got okay, which ones whichich questions do I get that annoy you Oh, well, none of them annoy me. but I think the one you probably get the most often is, well, are you going to run for president? How do you find hope? Oh yeah, that's a you know, But I never get annoyed people are genuine genuinely people that ask questions are almost always invariably polite and kind and the interactions O pleasant, even amongst people quite frankly, that very clearly are not aligned with me Politically almost always, unless they've been drinking and I'm out with my family. and then it gets a little tense. Other than that, Brittany, how do they keep in touch with us? Twitter, we are We weekly show pod, Instagram, threads Tikok, Blue S sky. We are We weekly show podcast. and you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, the Weekly Show with Johonn Stewart. Fantastic. And as always, we couldn't do it without you guys. I just want to thank producer Brittneany Medic, producer Jillian Sp, video editor and engineer Ravvatola, audio editor and engineer Noice and executive producers Chris M She and Katie Grayan. Oh, I seem to have forgotten one person our lead producer, Miss Lauren Water, Lauren. Yes. It is Lauren's final episode with the Wekly showhow podcast. She is moving on to greener and greater. and I just can't tell you how much I've appreciated. your your expertise and experience in the world of journalism and news I have always found so just grounding You know, it's similar to how I feel about Professor Miller. Like I just want to go like black and white, two dimensional caricature and you always bring a nuance and a shading and an experience to the conversation that is utterly invaluable And I thank you